New Zealand boys under investigation for running a rape club

Members of the Roast Busters brag about their sexual assaults on YouTube. (3 News New Zealand / YouTube)

A group of teenage boys in New Zealand are under investigation for raping vulnerable girls who are too drunk to fight back. The young men from Auckland call themselves the Roast Busters and the media is describing their group as a “rape club.”

The boys, ages 17 and 18, allegedly took advantage of some girls as young as 13 years old and coerced women into group sex. The boys are reportedly from privileged backgrounds and their names are slowly trickling into news reports. One member was identified as Joseph Parker, son of the actor who played Dozer on The Matrix.

Ever since the boys committed the alleged offenses two years ago, they’ve been bragging about their sexual assaults on social media platforms. Proud of their exploits, they were “slut-shaming” the girls they have slept with on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Ask.fm. The boys also used social media to recruit other men to join their rape collective.

In a YouTube video, two boys, with their faces in plain sight, told the camera: “We don’t choose the roast, the roast chooses us … They know what we’re like; they know what they’re in for.

The boys started publicly naming their victims on the Roast Busters Facebook about five months ago. They also posted videos of themselves having sex with girls. The Roast Busters Facebook page has been removed.

New Zealand police have been investigating the group since 2011 and are under fire from international media for not doing more to stop the club. Police have supposedly spoken to several victims but they claim that they’ve yet to receive a formal statement so they’ve been unable to make an arrest. One woman, now age 15, is claiming that she made a formal statement two years ago. She says that police told her that because she was wearing a skirt, she “was asking for it,” according to the Daily Mail.

This week, one victim appeared anonymously on a New Zealand news station.

“I just kept blacking out ’cause I had drunken too much,” one girl told New Zealand’s 3 News. “You could say I got raped. I had sex with three guys at one time.”

“The reason we have not prosecuted anybody is we don’t have sufficient evidence at this stage,” Detective Inspector Bruce Scott told CNN.